Advantages:
- You get the hardware you want for the proper price, meaning higher performance/dollar.
- Reliability. You generally get better stuff when buying it separate. Some pre-builts have custom, stripped down, motherboards with less or no room for expansion, overclocking, etc (for example).
- More personal. It's your computer.
- Experience; learning something new.
- If a component would malfunction you just have to return that specific part and not the entire computer.
- No bloatware. Ever.
- Communities are more helpful than your average salesperson who will try to pitch a three generations old i3 and a GT 640 to you with a premium price-tag saying "It's the latest GeForce!".

Disadvantages:
- Warranty different on each component.
- Takes some time to build.

this, the knowledge you acquire is priceless.

one thing you missed is that you can recycle parts, ie case, PSU, which will save you a few hundred each time. Invest in a good PSU ( corsair TX series never goes a miss,) and case and it will last you for years.

Also you can sell off the indervidual parts when you choose to upgrade offsetting the costs of the new parts. I upgraded from a i7 920 to a 2700k about 6 months ago ( obviously change of ram mobo and cpu) and also from a gtx 480 ( which i managed to flogg for £200 when i bought it for £240 a year and a half before, because its somewhat of a modders dream card) to a gtx 670. So in all to get a totally up to date machine, which would have cost easily over £1k, i spent £450. Bargain aye?

one thing you missed is that you can recycle parts, ie case, PSU, which will save you a few hundred each time. Invest in a good PSU ( corsair TX series never goes a miss,) and case and it will last you for years.

You can do that with a pre-built as well. (I already mentioned the fact that you get better parts.)

And I removed the video from your post. This is no place for memes or pony-videos.

there are many small companies that will build a computer of your choice for a small fee, which is basically the same as buying a premade with the bonus of getting everything you want - If you want a high performance pre built dont go to one of the big named brands (alienware) cause they will charge you over the odds for a designer logo on the side of the box - honestly I built my pc for £700 and the retail of the same specced pc from one of the big stores was around £1500 - with savings like that you can buy the parts and hire someone to put it together and still save a ton, and get a better quality pc

there are many small companies that will build a computer of your choice for a small fee, which is basically the same as buying a premade with the bonus of getting everything you want - If you want a high performance pre built dont go to one of the big named brands (alienware) cause they will charge you over the odds for a designer logo on the side of the box - honestly I built my pc for £700 and the retail of the same specced pc from one of the big stores was around £1500 - with savings like that you can buy the parts and hire someone to put it together and still save a ton, and get a better quality pc

to an extent

the standard gaming build of an 1155 i5 CPU is not something that you generally find in prebuilts, and is probably the strongest argument for building your own, however, most companies seem to think gaming means an X79 and an i7-3820, which is going to be a $1500 ish build, but not as well spent as an i5 build, but for that build, Dell is actually hard to beat, yes it would be possible for me to build a great 3820 gaming build for the same price as dell, but i will not be able to turn that into a profit when i resell it to the customer, nor can i offer the same service and support as dell, (support is the biggest reason to get an alienware anyway)

nor can anyone here beat a <$500 build from dell

people have this idea that building it themselves saves a ton of money, as if you can get a $1500 alienware for $500 if you build it yourself, this is simply not true, and never has been, however, the real savings dont start to show up until you are spending around $4k or more, when you look at my computer, it would probably cost 50-75% more than i paid for parts, to have a company like OriginPC or FalconNW build it, and when you do the math, that's a lot of money being wasted, in fact, it more than the tuition for a local tech/voc school in most places, you could take the money saved and take a full indepth A+ course

and actually, looking at Origin's website, they dont even know how to build a computer anyway, the stupid configurator keeps telling me i can't have a sound card and 2x 690s

You can do that with a pre-built as well. (I already mentioned the fact that you get better parts.)

And I removed the video from your post. This is no place for memes or pony-videos.

not really, more often than not pre-built computers ( if we are talking dells etc) have shoddy OEM PSU's which output MUCH less than their rated wattage/their resale value is next to nil. If you get a really good PSU within a prebuilt system then fair enough, but more often than not its something companies will skimp on to save money ( i see you use a corsair tx 750, which is a quality PSU, not many companies would put a $100 PSu in their machine). Same with cases. Also lighten up, its was just a vid expressing that i agreed with your post. Better quality parts yes you mentioned, but actually recycling parts/selling parts from an old build into a new was not mentioned in your original post.

I would say selling off and recycling/ selling old parts is generally the main thing that saves you the most money in the long run ( compared to your initial saving Vs a prebuilt.)

not really, more often than not pre-built computers ( if we are talking dells etc) have shoddy OEM PSU's which output MUCH less than their rated wattage. If you get a really good PSU within a prebuilt system then fair enough, but more often than not its something companies will skimp on to save money ( i see you use a corsair tx 750, which is a quality PSU, not many companies would put a $100 PSu in their machine). Same with cases. Also lighten up, its was just a vid expressing that i agreed with your post. Better quality parts yes you mentioned, but actually recycling parts/selling parts from an old build into a new was not mentioned in your original post.

I would say selling off and recycling/ selling old parts is generally the main thing that saves you the most money in the long run ( compared to your initial saving Vs a prebuilt.)

Doesn't mean you can't re-use it. And they usually don't house flat-out bad PSUs, they just get what works for the lowest cost. If they use bad PSUs that burn-out or simply break they will just have issues with warranty overflow which can lead to a negative impact on brand image. I mean, a i5 750 and GTX 550 Ti build (which is very common to go for 6500-7500 SEK here) doesn't take a monster PSU to run.

For example, I found a good FSP PSU, 500W, in my friends HP (or was it a PackardBell?) perfectly capable of running a GTX 460 (instead of a GT 330?). It was even rated 80+ Bronze.

My PSU is a complete and utter waste in my build financially. I could run this off a 400W if I wanted to. Heck even a 350W would probably work.

The rules are clear regarding memes; they don't belong here. I didn't make the rules, I simply assist users in following them.

Doesn't mean you can't re-use it. And they usually don't house flat-out bad PSUs, they just get what works for the lowest cost. If they use bad PSUs that burn-out or simply break they will just have issues with warranty overflow which can lead to a negative impact on brand image. I mean, a i5 750 and GTX 550 Ti build (which is very common to go for 6500-7500 SEK here) doesn't take a monster PSU to run.

For example, I found a good FSP PSU, 500W, in my friends HP (or was it a PackardBell?) perfectly capable of running a GTX 460 (instead of a GT 330?). It was even rated 80+ Bronze.

My PSU is a complete and utter waste in my build financially. I could run this off a 400W if I wanted to. Heck even a 350W would probably work.

The rules are clear regarding memes; they don't belong here. I didn't make the rules, I simply assist users in following them.

getting a high wattage PSU is not ideal and i never said that, i was simply talking about quality. Indeed your PSU is overkill in terms of wattage, but as a make of PSU its possibly one of the most reliable trusted brands out there Also means you have plenty of headroom to go Xfire. And yes a 350-400w would work with your current setup, although tbh with a 7970 heavily overclocked would be drawing up to 250w on its own under full load. At stock, yer a 350-400w with a high efficiency would just about cut it. Having said that you are very unlikely to run both your PSu and CPu at full load apart from when you are stressing it. People do overcompensate when it comes to PSU's and get 800w's or so for a build that only needs 400w. The problem is people buy cheap 800w's over decent 400w's thats the issue.

Its the same in my machine, i have a 850w which i have had for 5 years. It is totally overkill because my machine draws around 350-400w on full load even with my OC's. (Specs below,) but at the time i bought the PSU i had 2 gtx 8800's, a [email protected], 8GB of ram, 4 drives in a raid array, 2 DVD drives and about 10 fans.

frankly reusing a old dell PSU would be a terrible idea. If it cops out it will fry all your nice expensive hardware. I have seen people destroy entire machines from cheaping out/ reusing bad quality PSU's. Usually quailty PSU's which struggle to power a machine will just cut out, blue screen etc, cheap ones are liable to literally blow up, i had a cheap one i bought for a media centre splurt out black smoke the moment i turned it on.

Yes it is a risk of spoiling their brand image, but quite frankly as long as the majority of their computers work, it wont matter. They build machines with the minimal cost, and i would guess the cost of spending double or even triple on a decent say 450w corsair psu would be a lot more expensive than say replacing 10% of computers that get killed because of a rubbish PSU. Also i dont know where you are getting your info from " they usually don't house flat-out bad PSUs," because every dell i have torn apart are the same £15 OEM PSU's you can buy off ebay. Specialist companies tend to step it up a bit, but not by much.

frankly reusing a old dell PSU would be a terrible idea. If it cops out it will fry all your nice expensive hardware.

i've honestly never seen this happen, i know that it can, and on occasion does, but i have to wonder if there are other circumstances involved, 99% of the time when a PSU dies, it just dies, and you are left with a computer that doesn't turn on

i've honestly never seen this happen, i know that it can, and on occasion does, but i have to wonder if there are other circumstances involved, 99% of the time when a PSU dies, it just dies, and you are left with a computer that doesn't turn on

i have seen it more times than i would have cared to. Especially being a daily visitor to a tech forums / trying to figure out why their computer is dead, only to be told they plugged a 7970 into a 350w oem psu. Then trying to whittle down what else has been destroyed in the process. In most cases i have seen the mobo fried, generally the ram survives, but CPU not so much. But as i said with half decent PSU's they wont usually fry a system if they cop out. But quite frankly i feel you are playing Russian roulette with the rest of your system. Its not a risk i would ever be willing to take personally, neither would i advise anyone to do the same. For forking out that bit extra you can be much safer in the knowledge if the PSU does die it would take everything with it.

also crazy rig, i hope you game with 3 screens, fold and do some serious number crunching! I see you are a techy though so at least i know that a rig that powerful will be getting some decent use out of it . It breaks my heart when people decide to build a 6 core quad sli 32 GB gaming rig, leave it at stock, and then browses the internet and games play on a single 1080.

i have seen it more times than i would have cared to. Especially being a daily visitor to a tech forums / trying to figure out why their computer is dead, only to be told they plugged a 7970 into a 350w oem psu. Then trying to whittle down what else has been destroyed in the process. In most cases i have seen the mobo fried, generally the ram survives, but CPU not so much. But as i said with half decent PSU's they wont usually fry a system if they cop out. But quite frankly i feel you are playing Russian roulette with the rest of your system. Its not a risk i would ever be willing to take personally, neither would i advise anyone to do the same. For forking out that bit extra you can be much safer in the knowledge if the PSU does die it would take everything with it.

also crazy rig, i hope you game with 3 screens, fold and do some serious number crunching! I see you are a techy though so at least i know that a rig that powerful will be getting some decent use out of it . It breaks my heart when people decide to build a 6 core quad sli 32 GB gaming rig, leave it at stock, and then browses the internet and games play on a single 1080.

on tech forums you are going to see more of it, but like i said, i wonder how much is other circumstances with PSUs, such as voltage spikes and whatnot, obviously there are bad PSUs out there, but most OEMs are of decent quality, if Dell sells you an Aurora with a 690, they are actually pretty good at making sure its a high quality system, same thing with the premium premade companies, not so much with the lower end ones like ibuypower

also, atm my computer is not doing much, i just have a clean W7 install, im debating on whether or not to switch back to 2k8r2 or get W8, but i am owner of the MMO-C folding team, and i also bruteforce passwords and generate rainbow tables, as well as do a lot of vm work

Someone mentioned earlier reusing your Dell PSU. I would advise against that unless you plan on using it in another Dell computer. Dell uses a non-standard wiring system. It will not work in a standard ATX 24-pin interface on any motherboard that does not come from Dell. All of the same wires are there, so if you feel like rewiring your harness, that is possible, but if you are not comfortable with doing that, you may get to a stopping point very quickly.

"Man is a slow, sloppy and brilliant thinker; the machine is fast, accurate and stupid." -William M. Kelly

on tech forums you are going to see more of it, but like i said, i wonder how much is other circumstances with PSUs, such as voltage spikes and whatnot, obviously there are bad PSUs out there, but most OEMs are of decent quality, if Dell sells you an Aurora with a 690, they are actually pretty good at making sure its a high quality system, same thing with the premium premade companies, not so much with the lower end ones like ibuypower

also, atm my computer is not doing much, i just have a clean W7 install, im debating on whether or not to switch back to 2k8r2 or get W8, but i am owner of the MMO-C folding team, and i also bruteforce passwords and generate rainbow tables, as well as do a lot of vm work

the problem is that there are only about 2/3 companies ( corsair and OCZ being the main ones),I would buy from in regards to PSUs, i woulnt get the PSu i have now, Zalaman aint a great company for power supplies ( didnt know as much back then as i did now). Even expensive PSU's from reputable companies like thermaltake aint always great. There is a lot of marketing put into selling PSU's but they are also some of the hardest things to tell if they are good or not, more often than not the advertising is also incredibly misleading.

I dont know why you put so much faith in OEM PSU's more often than not when i have looked at dell PSU's not only have they lacked adequate rails but the amperage per volt has been pretty bad as well. I would have to rip apart a alienware to have a look ath the PSU's they use. I could be wrong, but i doubt they are of a high quality.

triggy89,
Seasonic and FSP are two of the largest manufacturers of reliable PSUs. Their OEM units are the base for most of the power supplies you see, including the ones from OCZ, Corsair, XFX, Antec and so on. Not saying they make everything, but if you're looking at a good PSU chances are it's either Seasonic or FSP.

Not sure I agree with the FSP aspect, but you certainly find Seasonic, at least in design, in most quality units. With Corsair you're generally going to see Seasonic and Channel Well based units. With Antec it's usually Seasonic and Delta. With XFX it's also Seasonic. Right now I believe OCZ is using Great Wall and HighPower for a lot of their units. Their PC Power & Cooling units tend to be Seasonic and Super Flower.

The common factor here is obviously Seasonic, which isn't surprising, as they've been setting the standard for quality power supply units for some time now. FSP does have some quality units, along with some horribly shotty ones, but I believe your assessment of them in the market place is exaggerated.

As for the original question at hand, I would say the biggest advantage is the warranty coverage. With a shelf bought system you get a 1 year warranty and have to pay a significant premium for an ESP. The warranty coverage on most individual retail parts is usually 3 years or more.

triggy89,
Seasonic and FSP are two of the largest manufacturers of reliable PSUs. Their OEM units are the base for most of the power supplies you see, including the ones from OCZ, Corsair, XFX, Antec and so on. Not saying they make everything, but if you're looking at a good PSU chances are it's either Seasonic or FSP.

Originally Posted by Dizey

Not sure I agree with the FSP aspect, but you certainly find Seasonic, at least in design, in most quality units. With Corsair you're generally going to see Seasonic and Channel Well based units. With Antec it's usually Seasonic and Delta. With XFX it's also Seasonic. Right now I believe OCZ is using Great Wall and HighPower for a lot of their units. Their PC Power & Cooling units tend to be Seasonic and Super Flower.

The common factor here is obviously Seasonic, which isn't surprising, as they've been setting the standard for quality power supply units for some time now. FSP does have some quality units, along with some horribly shotty ones, but I believe your assessment of them in the market place is exaggerated.

As for the original question at hand, I would say the biggest advantage is the warranty coverage. With a shelf bought system you get a 1 year warranty and have to pay a significant premium for an ESP. The warranty coverage on most individual retail parts is usually 3 years or more.

cheers for the info guys, I have to say that buying a decent PSU is generally one of the most difficult parts of a build. ( hence why i have been putting off getting a new out for like 5 years.)

Agreed Seasonic are a great brand as well ( they slipped my mind ) FSP i am not so sure about i dont know enough about them. Its just from my experience i have found that OEM PSU's tend to be very lacking in the number of rails they have ( from hte ones i have torn out of about the 5-6 dells i have dissected.

I have to admit i do love corasir PSU's atm because of the presleeved modular option. Costs a bomb, but much easier than sleeving them all yourself.

---------- Post added 2012-10-16 at 10:36 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Maelle

I'm on the brink of ordering a pc soon, I don't feel confident to buy the parts and make my own, and it seems like a hassle tbh...

I'm looking at sites where I can basically buy it piece by piece and they assemble it, so I can see what brands they are using for all the parts, and change stuff around for my budget etc..

When I added up the cost of the parts, I would hardly save anything at all building my own :< (denmark not know for it's amazing cheapness anyway)

What you will find is that the "specs" are somewhat the same" but the parts will more often than not be of a higher quality and have a higher resale value! When you factor in the cost of windows it does make the saving relatively small. But just remember you can reuse you windows ( unless its OEM) I have had my version of 7 professional on 3 different builds now. ( and i got it for a mere £30 on a student deal while at uni )

I see this more as an advantage. The warranties pre builts give are crap, usually only one year. The PC that I built has 3 years on MB, GPU, CPU, 7 years on the PSU and memory has a l lifetime warranty. Plus, with a pre built you have to ship the whole PC back with the chances of more things getting damaged.